


The Catalyst

by nigellecter (orphan_account)



Series: Nigelisms [4]
Category: Charlie Countryman (2013), Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Coma, Drug Use, F/M, Internal Monologue, M/M, Other, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-04-17 00:25:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 33
Words: 16,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14176590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/nigellecter
Summary: Headcanon posts written by me, inspired by numerous threads, sudden inspirations, etc. They're mostly internal dialogues/cerebral unfurling of Nigel's headspace.





	1. Chapter 1

**It hurts until it doesn’t;**  he’s feeling  _hopeless_ in the gutters of his mind, with nowhere to stop but nowhere to go either. He’s crashing against the **merciless currents**  of his thoughts, the black miasmic clouds smothering his  _eyes_ and his  _lungs_ , and he’s wondering if he’ll ever make it out alive from this fucking ghost of a town he built inside his head. With no illumination, no guidance as he stands like a grown child lost in an adult world. 

Confused of what’s ahead, afraid to take a step, despite his  **intrepid heart** , with its absolute _resiliency_ , thrumming against the surface of his ribcage. He tries to remember all the dreams he used to have before the darkness took over his body, his  **soul**. 

No blanket of stars would save him from the screams and cries he still sheds, as  _down_ ,  _down_ the ladder he travels. The unattainable light flees further from his grasp, yet the tangibility of Gabi’s being solidifies as she seduces him. Even when all the  **red blades**  sleeping by his side, as if all the  **blood** and the  **rubies** and the  **flames** weren’t enough to cut and ravage him open, everything  _splitting_ and  _cleaving_ from head to toe. 

Never would his wound be  **cauterized** beneath the crackling surface of the frozen lake, as the toxins of his broken heart releases like thick, suffocating clouds. Even all that revelation wouldn’t ever diminish his soulful responsibility, as he fights a  **thousand battles,**  locked in an _immovable pensieve_ of his mind as he struggles beneath the cosmic depth of submerging ocean. For he’s born into  **chaos** , born into a world that couldn’t handle his touch and  **conflagratory nature** , unapologetic of his chaos, proud of the storm he had created and he’d be well-rested before cities trembled before him. 

But he remains a **silent chaos** , a  _mayhem_ that speaks of the endless wrath and also a despicably **wretched sorrow**  and **brooding gloom**. This is his catalyst, as his doom-stricken being finds its way to resurgence and solidifying existence. And even without his past lover by his side, His  **manifested reality**  will breathe a whole new  _reflection_ , with the bandwidth of his thoughts expanding as his blood swells. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Red as Visceral Thrill**

The violence clings to his aura like the  _raindrops_ suspended in the air, his held breath becomes even more so  **exquisite** before it takes an immediate plunge into the wrath of his brand of  **hellfire**. He’s on the cusp of trembling down, headfirst as the  **whirling slither of flames**  weave through the gray matter of his brain. There’s no escaping it, for he’s lost in its barren desert and the only thing keeping him alive is the mirage that is his pumping lifeblood with music of palpitating heartbeat. 

For  **change** is moving him along; singing its  _constant song_ , yet changing the melody, claiming how things will evolve to be. And crimson red of his life that had been a series of events makes sense, simply coming back to change as all of his senses change with age. Numbing the  _miasmic clouds_ , healing the wounds, yet gnawing through the  **vulnerable nerves**. His perception does not quite down as his flesh remains voraciously ripped, torn and split. 

Nerve endings spark like jewels, as they  _coagulate_ to become the **whooping applause**  of the celebration. Along multitudes of crimson splatters and his own pulsating heartbeat turning like a hide drum’s palpitations become thousands of voices, piled up on top of each other, it’s a familiar feeling that stimulates something deep within his core, passing through him like a continuous electric shock.

The soaring skyscraper rearing up into the sky with  **unforeseeable end**. Even when it could crumble like tower of Babel, his own  _demolition_ itself would be  **calamitous**. He would be in the very midst of it, the mere hubbub of vehement crumble would die down instantaneously as if he had severed the electric cord of a set of blasting amps. Numbing the clouds of his mind as he’s left with disciplined intention; conquering his destiny as his bloody knuckles and lungs scrape raw and still. Damnation hits him once, twice, as his own demise overflows and becomes lost beneath the crescent moons and flurries of cold air. 

Then, the  **silence** as it leaves in its wake in shockingly stark. He merely lifts  _a pale eyebrow,_  looking more silvery beneath the faint moonbeam, offering the **inky alleyway** , appearing even more darker with the portent destruction.

There are different degrees of horror - the worst being what Nigel is exactly doing. Through the calamity of his  **visceral manifestation of violence** , already  _ripe_ with potent images conjured up in his brain, he merely observes through the minute silence. His own struggles becoming a most  **mellifluous aria** , his hazel embodying the laced anger -  _fixated_ , as a slender chink of light manages to seep in. The air around him about to take on a visible form.

He’s more than capable of exacting the  **vengeance** against amorally wrong encounters. Those motherfuckers had already crossed his  **moral event horizon** , already caught in a _paradigm shift_ as he thinks of indulging himself in those dampening feelings. The law enforcement would have to piece together countless fragments before they could even recognize the  **spectacle of raw flesh** , gaping gashes and completely caved in skull. And forever he’d hold the memories of a kiss, of his split-lips and gates built of stars and clouds filled with smoky overflow of his heated warmth and writhing bones, too  _vividly_ and  _vibrantly_ addicted in the obsidian hue. 


	3. Chapter 3

There is a  **particular feeling**  he only gets when he wakes up to a pale blue light filtering through the dusted curtaiins. And his bed is far from being crisp and warm, so when he inches his foot a little to one side, he finds a a pool of _clammy coolness_. And when he stares up at the white, bleak ceiling shaded in latticework of blues and thin veins of gold, he realizes today is one more day to breathe and fold his body into its  **unique shape** in what he views as the Tetris of reality. 

He’s not the  **sink-pit** for the powerful wills of the world, yet all the  _nourished_ ,  _cultivated_ **control** and  **subtle strength** of a system devoted to Nigel Lecter’s profound and excruciatingly wired mind become washed out in the normal strangeness of the world. _In the special dark of the pit, he remains confined and are not the walls painted in the emblems of all creeds and fellowship and brotherhoods and collections of social connections and groups galore?_ It’s a fucking marvel and a fucking amusement, but he does not heed on its dynamism like the others. 

He’s well-aware that there are  **unfathomable colors**  other than blue exists in the sparking new horizon that has gone unexplored, yet his setting soul returns nothing, but the empty blue of a night’s cry.  ****His encompassing the gaze of a predator filled with _rage_ , as sharp, stabbing and prickling pain continues to reverberate through his slatted ribcage. He could choose to scream out silently as he casts it upon the nothingness of his dimly-lit, cramped flat,  _but how could he endorse such hatred upon the almost-victim of his brawly endeavor?_  

The absence of  **vigor** and  **resurgent** one meets in the empty air as the ambiance instantly disperses with deathly stillness, minus his charged ebb and flow of his heart. The sounds within his skull becomes a  _fluttering_ ,  _agitating percussion_ of his own out-of-whack heart and sanity. 

Where the  **undistinguished edges** overlap and formulate into clumps of bodies. Working calmly and methodically through the labyrinth of his brain, he still fails to recollect what really had happened to the other party who accompanied his aggressor, who were ever so  _majestic_ and  _calm_ overall. Where the tight thread between  **quietude** and  **overstimulated senses** bounce endlessly against the taut trampoline sever and his somatic cells become restless.

****_Oh, the fucking pain,_  that damned wretched  **hornet’s stings** that would be his  _innate sin_ , that would drive his heart to squeeze such rush of vile blood through his veins and paint the sky with his blood-dipped fingers. How their seemingly  _indestructible_ ties had bled so much **virulent venom**  and how he wished such unfulfilled wishes to vanish within his subconsciousness. If he could bite his tongue and stop the lies from permeating through his core. 

The concept of his true nature dug into him like bacteria, into the  **backbone** of his essentiality. There would be beneficial ones to be sure, but they were  **deceased** long time ago. It only existed on the  _dusty film reel_ , which were festering and rotting away and anything that was **sweet** clogged his mind had been vanished.  ****His hazel is the embodiment of a **blazing trail of fire,**  encompassing his cramped, messy and musty ambience and the asperity of his voice irritates even himself. Wretched vivid memories of his, though most of it in _suffocating pain_ and dense fog of its  **haziness** as his half-conscious facade lacked both vigor and staunch will to live. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Write something inspired by Linkin Park’s - Papercut.

> _It’s like I’m paranoid lookin’ over my back_  
>  It’s like a whirlwind inside of my head  
> It’s like I can’t stop what I’m hearing within  
> It’s like the face inside is right beneath my skin   
> 

_Falling_ , every bit of  **descension** merely feels like falling down, falling through, falling out of the orbit that holds everything together. Through the shuffling of curtains, with his hands tugged on the drapes. How  **stained sheets**  tickles protrusions of his cheeks as he peered through the grimed window, mirroring his smoky, half-lidden gaze that  _fixates_ upon particularly not a fucking thing important. Rivulets of dark water patters against the pain and when he exhales, his breaths fogs the glass and clouds his view. His  **darkness** crashes into the brick walls, instead of trying to break the weak point of the  _foundation_. 

Sleepless nights and swigs of cheap whiskey isn’t strong enough to get her off his mind - such **internalized entity** that lives within him makes all the impulsive promises and kisses with calamitious collision that he feels, but didn’t necessarily  _happen_ , in ripped shirts after climbing the  **barbed wires** , escaping through the labyrinth of the midnight streets, and finding himself lying down on **lampless streets**  and lingering dripping musk and empty spafes next to his own. 

He should’ve already faded away the moment he started to lose the sense of self, as he both crashes and burns - yet the  **havocs** he wrecked becomes undone as the chords of his entire being becomes a  _prosecuting lawyer, judge_  and an  **executioner** ; they accuse him, they mock him and laugh at him for failing, for falling. 

And his own brain is just an empty nest in this fucking shriveled and withered tree of life. No love remains stored in the  **carcass** of his heart, as words no longer drirp down his ajar lips like honey and acid,  _whispered_ underneath the sheets and  _lathered_ where it matters most in the hives of his mind as the infastructure  _demolishes_. 

Thoughts begin to fester, taking refuge in **modest cocoons** that he believed would protect him from predatorial swoon, of his unstable, yet inexonerable  _crumbling_. The world isn’t simply a  **deceitfully silky spiderweb** ; as sharp rusted blades of fate devours his body, cleaving through his flesh and harvesting blood until it moved onto the next foolish, one completely  _intoxicated_ with a  **devil-may-care attitude**  towards the world. 

Yet, no purposeful counterreactive measure will cut down the root of the problem as the pendulous morality becomes the  **misleading weeds** , spreading with its ominous intent as a **graveyard garden**  of his darkness flourishes without the lavish faucet of glimmering light. 


	5. Chapter 5

With  _her_ , the  **opportunity** , the door to his life  _never_ closes, no matter how many times one of them tries, or the fate throw them a curveball that plunges before Nigel could ever gouge its projectile. It’s like that penny that turns up in his pocket or that one shoelace that always unties; every time he thinks it’s the  **new beginning** , the end prevents him a whisper and a kiss. He had been already graced with a known phenomenom that was the saving grace of her serenade, and his daily routine now consists of savoring his hunger and thirst, a different dimension than watching the world pass in passing shadowy wraiths. 

Gabi may be one of those people who bring out the most and best in him. There isn’t a specific person for Nigel that would even have a capability to glimpse into a flawed blend of his cacophonous life, for he breathes  **chaos** and his body has been painted with **chaotic art**. With breaths as wild wind and his heart as  _ravenous_ and  _voracious_ as that of wolf’s or beast’s. He permeates the earth with  **fervent radiance**  with less of an inhuman presence, but something that would  **supercede** the nature’s hungered call.

Wind rushes round the inside of him, just like how Gabi’s tunes had played with the strings of his  **pendulous heart**. No more standing over the edge of a precipice where he would let his heart shatter, for his chest to become a  **morgue** where the  _wildest notions of dreamless_ shatters beneath the frightful grasp of inevitable  **resolve**. It manifests into a beautiful melody, conjuring a stream of springtime meadows as far as he could see. He isn’t a creature born of the  **luminescent light** , perhaps he had been more like the  _shadow_ of a sauntering star. An untouchable thing,  _vanquished_ ,  _eaten_ , made for nothing lest he becomes wholesome in this moment. 

It’s such a precise feeling, a  **crescendo** that builds like a tear in chrysalis as paradoxically, his **jagged splintered** gash heals. How his heart repels  _vice grasp_ of pain and maneuvers into such sweet, drunken oblivion. And the beastly darkness within him with all the vision in his eyes go from dark to red to yellow and orange as if he was in a  _drug-related state of mind_ \- without all the dreams of nightmares, death and destruction of a world burning to flames - yet those still stick with him to fuel, to fix him after his inevitable fall. 

He does not have to crumble into gravel anymore, for the  **perfect road** ahead of him will lead him towards his  **destination**. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nigel's headcanon based on Linkin Park's Papercut 
> 
> It’s like I’m paranoid lookin’ over my back  
> It’s like a whirlwind inside of my head  
> It’s like I can’t stop what I’m hearing within  
> It’s like the face inside is right beneath my skin

_Falling_ , every bit of  **descension** merely feels like falling down, falling through, falling out of the orbit that holds everything together. Through the shuffling of curtains, with his hands tugged on the drapes. How  **stained sheets**  tickles protrusions of his cheeks as he peered through the grimed window, mirroring his smoky, half-lidden gaze that  _fixates_ upon particularly not a fucking thing important. Rivulets of dark water patters against the pain and when he exhales, his breaths fogs the glass and clouds his view. His  **darkness** crashes into the brick walls, instead of trying to break the weak point of the  _foundation_. 

Sleepless nights and swigs of cheap whiskey isn’t strong enough to get her off his mind - such **internalized entity** that lives within him makes all the impulsive promises and kisses with calamitious collision that he feels, but didn’t necessarily  _happen_ , in ripped shirts after climbing the  **barbed wires** , escaping through the labyrinth of the midnight streets, and finding himself lying down on **lampless streets**  and lingering dripping musk and empty spafes next to his own. 

He should’ve already faded away the moment he started to lose the sense of self, as he both crashes and burns - yet the  **havocs** he wrecked becomes undone as the chords of his entire being becomes a  _prosecuting lawyer, judge_  and an  **executioner** ; they accuse him, they mock him and laugh at him for failing, for falling. 

And his own brain is just an empty nest in this fucking shriveled and withered tree of life. No love remains stored in the  **carcass** of his heart, as words no longer drirp down his ajar lips like honey and acid,  _whispered_ underneath the sheets and  _lathered_ where it matters most in the hives of his mind as the infastructure  _demolishes_. 

Thoughts begin to fester, taking refuge in **modest cocoons** that he believed would protect him from predatorial swoon, of his unstable, yet inexonerable  _crumbling_. The world isn’t simply a  **deceitfully silky spiderweb** ; as sharp rusted blades of fate devours his body, cleaving through his flesh and harvesting blood until it moved onto the next foolish, one completely  _intoxicated_ with a  **devil-may-care attitude**  towards the world. 

Yet, no purposeful counterreactive measure will cut down the root of the problem as the pendulous morality becomes the  **misleading weeds** , spreading with its ominous intent as a **graveyard garden**  of his darkness flourishes without the lavish faucet of glimmering light. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-Canon, Nigel leaving Bucharest.

He rides the waves, until the next day, under the sky so beautiful and blue. It must have made acquaintance with him as his motorcycle unravels further as the ache across his lungs flare like lightning each time he breathes.  _Steady, steady_ , he forces himself to slow and a thunderstorm blossoms in his chest. There’s a fog over his eyes, misting the irises and obscuring his view beneath the visor and he wonders, sometimes very far away, if he’d only ever seen everything through smoke. With a fucking haze all around the edges as he begins to  **fervently glow** , as shining lights on the parts of himself he’d learned to keep packed away refuses to remain  _hidden_. 

He cannot deny that he misses her; every day, he’s surrounded by  **chipped, fragmented memories**  of her and no matter where he goes, no matter where he tries to hide, there’s a little  _piece_ of her inside. Through the **surging onslaught** of whirling air, he tries to find peace and freedom from its hold on him. But he is  **taken**. 

Taken by what clenches inside of him as it squeezes him until he’s  **parallel** against the world’s horizon. All the cacophonous silence hovering around him like a looming grace of madness. Insanity without stability as the requirements of love vanish and diminish through unfurling galaxies. Against his better judgment to be strong, but his strength can only withstand his will to fall to pieces. How everything  **corrupts** and  **infects** his mind - as his thoughts, his dreams at night, his hours to sleep denied from him wish adamant grasp of burning throb as all the tarnished memories gather in a **bloody shame**. 

As inaudible pieces of numerous dreams he’d clung for the past year locked in petrification of a coma as he remained a mere  **ectoplasmic smoke**  when the world remained  _intangible_ and _untouchable_. He was a dead thing that couldn’t be resurrected in resurgence. And now, he merely finds the glimmer of the city’s edges becoming an exploding star - as he readies to sempiternally part upon the wretched city of transient, yet  _passionate_ ,  _all-or-nothing_  love. And some **primal instinct** in him tells him that he would never completely move on from the crimson crayon, drawn beneath the sapphire ornaments of that very ignited night. 

He cannot lie and say that he’s not just a little bit  _angry_ and  _irritated_. Everywhere he turns, there’s a  **fragment** ; a little bit of  **deja vu** every new scoop. With all the cemetary of his youth, with all the buried dreams and promises and unfulfilled desires, his heart can’t really fucking decide whether if it’s ready to move on. Every time it gets a  _whiff_ that he’s onto something new, it  **clenches** inside of him and reminds him of her. 

Sketched eyes with different feelings don’t do their justice to even express the profusion of explosive emotions that still remain silent that continue to plague his mind,  ****yet the gleam of the wing manifests into **flickering embers**  as his mind finds beauty in his strident mind. His virtuosity through his off-the-fucking-charts  _bravery, stupidity_  and  _pain_ \- he would trade none for blase normalcy, even when he’s too conflicted. The blaze of his **scorching marks**  bloom across, threatening to penetrate the whole world in  **eddy current**. 


	8. Chapter 8

A bit of blood tinges the  **transparency** of the drug and the syringe and he watches with both _anticipation_ and a bit of  _excitement_. He was familiar to the concept; through  **vulnerability** , with both physical and mental, came the most **mind-boggling revelation**. Even without spending too much needless time within the outer rims of his own psyche and corporeality and how his  **premeditated maze**  full of still unexplored realms worked. There is more than one word for beauty and the sky speaks in  **numerous languages** , unable to take root in his ears. 

For him, all he needed was his own office filled with barely ventilated air full of  **stale smoke** , dank air full of  _alcohol_ ,  _guitar riffs, throngs of bustling clubgoers_  stampeding through the dance floor, along with the _blurring overlapping halos_ of effulgent light. The  **phantasm** of the space along with his  **appurtenances** strewn over the desk as he enraptured in the evanescent sensation of cloud nine. 

Now, he only falls deeper into the pitfalls of  **delirium** , exacerbated by the galaxies painted in his hair and _dusted perspiration_ and  _gunpowder_ that corrodes further into the brittle cranium as the broken shortcuts of his heart thumps incessantly against the rawhide of his diaphragms. At least, he’s  _victorious_ , scrapped from the past and welcomed into a new future, despite should he break beneath the **lingering terror**  in his heart. 

He frantically spins in circles, eyes widening as he searches for the  **exit route** ; and realizes his barriers are slowly closing in. With his chest  _irrationally pounding_  and his heart coonstricting further with and into the walls, his mind becomes unable too latch onto a complete thought. He knows it’ll all  _pass_ and he’d  _sink_ beneath the hypno’s grasp, as torpor floods through his being; the sense of  **imbalance** crashes over him in a wave as the stronger the constriction becomes. Dragging in a  **ragged gasp of air** is the only instinct sprinting through his veins. And soon, the  **stammered surge** will find its  _normalcy_ and the dancing petals of light sould settle, like the remnants of ashes in his mind. 

_How did he even end up here?_  Grasping onto the frayed edges of his sanity as not even the boundary of where he begins and where he ends does not make sense. There may be numerous teeth-filled laughters at loud bursting tables in late nights, yet the only thing he drowns in is the **crushing feeling** on his chest and breathing in the **toxicity of stagnant air** as the dark purple of the sky twinkling as the daybreak paints. And it’s all the same fucking story his mind is obsessed with creating.  _Absence of light;_  as something forms from the darkness; an  **unknown power of some sort**  that will keep him going. 


	9. Chapter 9

Sometimes he imagines the  **umbral darkness** and  **him** , walking through a city at night, under a bright white moon.  ****Through the tangled mess of bloodied and soiled remnants of ripped fibers, dark clumps of locks drenched with the **grueling affliction**  of salty tears, distress of flesh and muscles and exuding emotions that drip with slumberous  _deathly tranquility_ , Nigel finds an uncanny rush of intangible stronghold of their shared embrace. 

The spiking sensation he feels as Gabi’s body pulls more against his own, that feel he had been  **dying** to come across against the grasp of his  _slipping corporeality_  resounds through quivering muscles and as the world wholes, in blending strokes and dense mist. The wavering **streetlights** stay still, so does the  **sidewalk**. The deafening stretch of incessant bombardment of sensations even drowning the  **solidifying darkness** wearing through his bones. In this moment, in defeated subjugation and too much love resonating with all of its roundness and bigness, he asks the darkness if it has ever wanted to wear a moonskin, as his own universe unfurls through the solid structure of his coppery mass. 

Obstinately refusing to be anchored within the  **comfort of silence**  and settling pitch-black of the ambiance, Nigel’s senses drown under the whooshing rush of blood and the intensifying blurring of the view. The heavy drum of the rain had long before turned into slush of scattering **frigidness** , blanketing his already cold pores of marble and slate into an arctic chill. A lick of shudder upon the dimple of his spine as he encases his weakened body within the confines of smoky nothingness, devoid of warmth as it had been the whole night. The destined **kiss of death** as the inescapable hold of fleeting life and sinking slumber, Nigel feels like Icarus falling from the dazzling array of spreading sun ray. 

His sun-streaked skin gliding as feathers  _fluttered_. His fallibility of **turbulent violence** and self-destruction. Intoxicated in flesh-ripping gashes and livid bruises suggestive of his tenacious life upon the earth. Through the **blazing infernos** causing wreckage through his body with bitter sting of both  _humiliation_ and _frigid embrace_  of the midnight blue.


	10. Chapter 10

> _I shiver and shake the warm air cold_  
>  I’m alone on my own  
> In every mistake I dig this hole  
> Through my skin and bones  
>   
> It’s harder starting over  
> Than never to have changed  
>   
> With blackbirds following me  
> I’m digging out my grave  
> They close in, swallowing me  
> The pain, it comes in waves  
> I’m getting back what I gave  
>   
> I sweat through the sheet as daylight fades  
> As I waste away  
> It traps me inside mistakes I’ve made  
> That’s the price I pay

The nightwalks are easy, because he knows he holds propensity to  _never_ come back; like a storm that never returns. As he delves further into further darkness of the drab concrete jungle, abitter chill creeps upon his features as all of the power and strength which he heralded with so much  **commanding presence**  strip, as does his memory. A _fluctuating doubt_ and  _shudder_ accompany shortly after as he abruptly parts away, seeking a **new sensation** against all shaking, agglomerated heat about to sweep him whole. 

As he dives deeper into the pensive of his  _subconsciousness_ , he had promised himself to never touch a particular strand of  **singular wave**  ever again. Because like that fucking loud ocean that slows down and never sets, his wired mind refuses to calm down;  **like the fire that never rest like a beast**. 

And everything  _stings_ through the creaking of his ribcage, mirroring the rusted gate, and from a small distance, he could hear the screaming; faded somehow, yet the walls had contained all the  **crescendos** and  **urgency** , as if every breaking moment had been rendering at this moment with a growing thunder in his throat. 

He could never sleep in the peace nor ever wake up again, like a land that  _hugs_ him and _buries_ him for the best. His  **expressive countenance**  remains bitten by frost of the chilly night, yet no frozen water penetrates into his fragile skin as his  **perilous gaze** takes on with the vigor of a dying man. The weight of his bones may sink into the creases of Bucharest’s trenchant night, yet here he was, standing in the midst of the fire as he waited to  _suffocate_ , as the shadow of his intangible form would fade in smoke. 

As every droplet of salt upon his coppery caramel flesh, as his  _piquancy_ and  _mellow delicacy_ of  **suppressed emotions**  blossom with its fullbodiedness of his flawed perfection.  _A monolith with an incurable illness on his sleeve._ There’s a churning inside of him, making him almost succumb with an illness. The pulsing questions he’d often find himself asking on nights like this become the looming burden without respite; and for a moment, **he’s in the eye of the storm**. Until he realizes everything he goes through means NOTHING.

When his feet finds the ground yet again in  _blissful_ , yet  _pained_ **delirium** , they sink heavily onto the dusted ground with his weary bones and muscles. Through the wavy spread of halos as his half-lidded gaze and parted lips search that ephemeral radiant sunlight, which barely graces the cold cement, the potency isn’t enough to penetrate the defensive layers of his fortified fortress. It has no chance of peering through the resounding govern of  **musky blackness**.

How he thirsts and hungers for the intimate touch and taste; losing a connection of that sort is **disgustingly foul** , but keeping it is  _distastefully necessary_  to survive the  **loneliness** of the physical plane he so dwells on. 


	11. Chapter 11

 

> __Fortunes fade in time  
>  I must change or die  
> Change or die  
> Change or die
> 
> __ Silent secrets, quiet hands  
> I know their story, an old romance  
> Come and kill me while you can  
> I will take you, this is our last dance 

There’s nothing more  **devastating** than the slow burn of a flame that used to go off like a firework; he’s not a  _trainwreck_ waiting to happen, or an  _explosion_ at the end of a tunnel. He’s more of a **light losing its spark** and somehow, he feels that’s sadder almost - it didn’t happen so  _abruptly_ that it feels like he’s ripping off a fucking band-aid. They’re a movie that started out oh-so beautiful, but as the end looms closer, he can sense that ending **stained with tear-tracks** on cheeks. After all, he’s the one who’s been left in such a  **wreckage** -  _an immediate outburst_ \- his words so  _fervid_ and  _feverish_ that he started to melt under his own pressure.

He’s still  **in shock** \- as nothing seems to make sense to him. He has seen the grave, yet it all eludes him at the end. He thinks of his own death almost  _constantly_ ; now unsure of his previous belief that he would die before - perhaps, after that fucking love came true. Even his life’s  **present turmoil**  seems tiny. His mind and heart  _cries_ , as his limbs and soul screams and shrieks and yearns as a  **torrent** fills his soul. A  **storm** occupies the space where his heart once resided. A blistering migrain has replaced his brain. 

He feels  _nothing_ , but a  **sickness** coming over him that needs to be expelled and exorcised. An anger, a grief he doesn’t dare feel; he’ll go fucking  **supernova** if he does not feel Gabi’s songs in his ears and on his lips. Yet, everything remains smoke and bone; intangible and capable of reducing into dust. 

He’s stuck beneath a re-run, **a fucking broken record**  of what couldn’t possibly happen in repliication as the **proverbial distress**  coontinues, as his mouth remains tasteless as it has been left open. But no words spew like cold dew in the awakening morning of days that seem to be  _neverending_. And with a lack of desirable actions, he’s  **suffocating** beneath all the half-written stories and half-forgotten past. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Attention, Attention, Into the Forest I Go || Lecterverse headcanon

 

The rush of blood immediately retracts within his core as his extended fingers feel numbed by the frigid wind. Yes,  _he fucking hated the snow_  - the immediate reason being he couldn’t ride his beloved and treasured bike. The coldness meant he had to bundle up and it didn’t look appeasing. Although he ran hotter than normal people, his **natural insulation**  did nothing to deter the seeping coldness, taking hold of every inch of his bristled skin. He’s still desperate for answers; no genuine tears may shed throughout the night, but the stammering bouts of melancholy guides him towards the darkness and treasured illumination of the stars. All he could witness is the bloodstained smiles of the victors, as the red liquid bursts out of their chests and pours from their agape mouths. 

How every wanton imagination fuels his rage, as the pain stings through the  **sorrowful gaze** of his gleaming hazel. Memories akin to a mighty ocean roars beneath the surging magmatic power of destructive anger. The parade of crimson and endless puffs of smoke reign in his _remembrance_ of such  **soft** and  **nostalgic pain**. 

Each whirling whip turns into  **gleaming blades**  upon his pronounced cheekbones as it paints his tanned skin a crimson shade. He’s dressed too thin for the weather, only in his burgundy button-down with the leather jacket, contouring and hugging planes of his muscles through the thin lining underneath and his favorite leatherlike pants, a bit of silvery sheen on the front side, reflecting the unperturbed crystals of the pristine snow.

Without him even realizing it, the ankle boots he wears clicks together intermittently, the surging coldness claiming his appendages as he stands rooted to the place. His muscles want to protest in  _defiance_ , yet, the nerves stretched throughout his body **obstinately refuse** to cooperate as the only source of warmth remains to be the bitterness of the tobacco, fleetingly cutting through the chill of the despair. An  **unreadable expression** seem to quickly pass through his brooding features, then it starts to linger like percolating coffee grounds. 

His trauma expands and breaks all the bones within his soul, the  _porous skeleton_  with  **permanent holes**  inside. The simultaneously contrasting sensation, his frenetic sultry heart battles against the frostbiting limbs, benumbed as his view drenches with red. He always had been fond of that hue, yet, it becomes an endless array of pins and needles upon his skin as the idea of disintegration overwhelms him. He hadn’t been to his ‘ _home_ ’ country, and with a good reason at that.

Feeling like a flickering light upon the obsidian darkness, the gradual moonbeam along with the untarnished purity of the flurry does nothing to blanket him with yearning warmth. Almost entirely filled with void as he lets one word linger against his still warm lips. In hushed tones as he regards the world with half-shut gaze, his drawn, deep ridges of his eyebrows pinch slowly, as he  _suppresses_ the  **scalding embers**  behind the diaphanous irises. 

Through the merciless lick of the slurry slush wetting his whole front and back, the etched crystals, coalescing through and beneath the fibers of his clothes fossilizes him right in the place. After the _unbearable icicles_  jabbing through the pores of his skin, everything slowly eases. Perhaps he really had gotten used to the cold he never welcomed. He knows he and his brother had never come across Mischa’s remains. Even if they had, the  **skeletal, ravaged remnants** would be  _unrecognizable_ \- wild animals tearing through the tender bones, the gossamer of the flesh too sweet and tasty to pass. Within the **cruel world** , the unperturbed purity came in her form.  _Too evanescent, a phantasm passing through his mind._

He feels smaller than he ever had felt before. Not when he had been embracing the soil which continuously seeped his own crimson, certainly not when he had been incapacitated for periods at time whenever his  _relentlessness_ and _poor judgment_  had his cells to shriek in onslaught of  **incinerating heat**. In the midst of clattering teeth and sluggish muscles, there’s a  **queer tranquility** as he continues to dream while awake.  

He could feel his breathing grow shallow, as if his lungs had been turned into the sun-baked earth in the midst of Sahara Desert. His usually healthily glowing skin now looks more like the  **sandy dunes**  underneath the relentless sun, the  _heatwaves_ seeping through in a bright orange glow.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-canon monologue, both Nigel x Gabi and Nigel x Hannibal.

When Nigel falls, he just does not fall; he  _hits_ **everything downward** and  _slams_ into every wall when he falls in love. As he breaks every bone, the pain becomes  _unbearable_ , as he becomes  **obsessed** with piercing repression that wounds him with every jagged stone. But his obsession isn’t just an infatuation, for when he loves, he gives his all and swears his oath to be better than he’d ever been. The **mantras of his heart**  recites every providence, and yet still he falls and his heart breaks with every venture  _failing_ ,  _contemplating_ every mistake. 

_Why was he always to blame when the recipient never reciprocates, why is he always to fucking blame when the obstacles are never easy to overcome when the unrequited feeling threatens to leave him undone? Why is he to blame for only being human?_

If it is a crime to care for another to take interest in his life, to want to share his world with them, even if his love  _smothers_ , then he’d be fucking guilty for loving another fucking human being sharing a world with people he hates. And if he chooses to take a tumble down the rabbit hole in search of a wonderland for a love, perhaps through **recurrent dream** of them, he would cause every inch of his heart to  _leap_ , his pore to  _sweat_ , and his core to  _twist_ and _turn_ with every minor touch. 

The  **once-conflagrating**  fire may have dwindled and he could hardly feel it coming back to life, but it will never go out; he refuses to be  _frozen_ over again. And even if he’s burning alone on the  **dying light of rage**  and  **bitterness** , he will still choose to  _burn_. Nigel Lecter fucking refuses to ever become numb again. 

And it hurts, he hurt, maybe more than he’s willing to admit, because he was just getting used to having someone listen again, but that’s over; as the  **substantive nature**  of his heart, of his bones scream hunger for the raw. Perhaps he still wedges himself into the crevice between _fantasy_ and  _fiction_ , to be given kindling to the fire he continues to breathe as he has summoned it from the ache in his belly. 

_And as it should_ \- it seems that his history has decided that their lives must intertwine for the world to go on, for better or for worse, his lifeline is tied to the other’s heartbeat and he does not think his significant other understands how much he has  _wanted_ this, how much he has _feared_ this when his vision changes. For the other has changed him. 

_Will their paths coincide once again or forever run side by side?_  He does not know. But all he knows is that through this current within the **deepest reverie**  of his, he will push ever forward, round and round and round, chasing after, but only reaching for one short moment at a time, in intermittent bursts. 


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-Canon, to become jaded.

Perhaps this was the beginning of the end, that Nigel would understand that this  _was_ the best of something awful, the **ending point** ,  **full stop** , fucking someone in the bare mattress without ever hoping for building a palace of emotional connections, the sinking ship, drowning crew, the  **goddamn forbidden taboo**  he always knew. The worst half of his soul that is so scarred, bruised and stained suffers further with the rain, bitterness, anger and most important of all, the pain that matches the **rhythm of the storm**. 

Perhaps his trauma had been  _untranslated_ , with its stitches still intact as he refuses to bury the hatchet. And more than enough of his flesh and blood, wrapped in stardust that encompasses all the dreams laced with hope, that used to overflow with  _strength_ ,  **pulsating with love**  now only soothes the hurt. 

No need to place his hand on his pounding chest to steady his heart; he’s without all the _radiance_ and  _splendor_ , as huffed breaths like fires of Hell blows out, leaving  **smoldering coals**  of impossibility and bittersweet dreams on infernal tongues. How angels and demons of his mind appear in the most quiet hours, in the blank spaces, **liminal beings of shadow** and **starlight** that guide him above to the outer rimbs of the cosmos of his expansive thoughts. 

Hellbent is a word like  **whiskey** ; sweet and stinging, infused with sugar cane and nettles. Hell, the place where Satan reigns, bent, like the stalk of a rose deprived of water, downcast to the underworld in Hades’ footsteps, with  _fragrant petals_  scenting the cavern with memories of hot summer of his  **incapacitation** and dreams of love that was  _Gabi Ibanescu_. In hell, his life grows all the sulfuric soils as  **brimstone** mists in ashy weather, without brightly shining sun as he remains confined within the boundary of his _tangible self_ , along with the  **shriveling tangent** of his imagination as no baritone, sweet songs of love exists. 

**Hellbent describes him well.** For the triad of sex, drugs and violence become this **infectious madness** , just as unchecked interpersonal violence will engender and endanger more of itself and himself in the end. And  _beyond_ the meditation on them, he’d unable to make choices between falsely classifying safe things as dangerous or falsely classifying dangerous things as safe (here is where the pedantic among him points out that this is a  _false dichotomy_ , for he can certainly do both simultaneously). Or the  **dual notion**  about classifying  _opportunities_. 

It’s  _exhausting_ and leads him to make  **inefficient paths** (and  _mistakes_ ; he should have been more careful and vigilant of the space where he executed those people and becoming a fucking sacrificial lamb he didn’t fucking ask for in his unlikely quest to gain Gabi’s love back). And while there is something  **immensely seductive** about the straight paths promised with the filter of  _overconfidence_ that comes from having the metaphorical gun of the  **mad, lawless dog** , but that’s a change monumentally difficult to  **reverse**. 


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-Canon.

Fire is burning inside his lungs, manifesting into this  **very torch**  inside his heart;  _lighting, igniting, swelling_ in adamant flames upon the altitude of this weather. Despite the essentiality of him dwindled into thin-dried twig, its **brittle core** continues to be litten unwantedly - as a paradox blazing as to kill his sickness over a smoke. 

Once, he had been the  _departed_ , laying in an expensive fate of carved stone and stainless steel. Yet,  _immovable_ and capable of  **not moving** , despite enough potency of his blood being spilled through whispers encrusted for a rumbling of  **inevitable loss** as charged emotions waned down beneath sempiternal diaphanous and eternally frozen gaze. 

He still recalls the bustling highway around it, along with its  **deafening crowd** of the air flooded with acrid fumes and descension of consuming water heightening the ever-pleasant scent of petrichor. How it tainted the air even more,  _saturating_ it with the scent of asphalt and spilled petrol. It was as if the clouds have gathered to wash away the pavement; the **pavement** of where his death would occur and the  **metaphorical pavement** of his mind, to heal the gash torn throughout the forests of his  _subconscious_ that he has tended season after season, but his efforts work against them. 

With each layer of asphalt painstakingly eroded, a new one is laid down to seal his fate. The higghway has grown thicker and busier, as no roots of his  **teetering indecision**  would breach through and across his barrier. And he  _ruminates_ , perhaps they were just meant to be this way; drifting apart, several words  **unspoken** , left with nothing, but  _unanswered questions_  and _regrets_. And he finds himself standing in the midst of the heavy fields like a still life;  **stuck in a misinterpreted dream**. 

While the stars remain dull, a healing takes place in the bottom of the barrel of his **sunken soul**. In the frightening recollection of the past, he is struck by hope for an ending, despite being met with the  **inextricability** of trapped in a space of black and white filled with dread. Days may remain  _monotonous_ and nights are  _colder_ beneath the thin sheets, but he knows, no matter what happened between them, the prospect of still remembering the melody of the healing tune is still what makes him feel at home. 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HC + Rain

Perhaps Nigel Lecter’s entirety is a  **paradox** , for his tornado-filled mind is never at peace and each movement is met in a classic exchange of give and take. Beneath the  **darkness** and all the  **intensity** of his gaze, he carries a storm within his bones, containing both  _chaos_ and _calmness_. Yet, his strings tangle purely in the realm only a _special person_ can create. 

And the  _construct of skewed and distorted time,_  as the time needed to formulate  **nimbostratus**  separates him to fulfill the simplicity of his basic needs. How lightning peers through his veins, with every  **suffering, strife**  and  **struggle** manifests as he remains pinned together in a cracked armor. Yet, he does not refuse to carry the burden and the weight of it all. 

Instead of a beaming light, he may speak a language more akin to a faint clap of thunder through the clouded skies that threaten to drench with  **heartbreak** , instead of  _heartfelt notions_. He cannot distinguish what is worse; being locked outside of his own mind or being locked inside of it as the passing wind exacerbates as his mind wrings all the splashes and platters that constitute dispersing sadness. 

And along with each  _drip, drip, drip_  of the rainwater, he’s reminded of Gabi; temporarily, down the drain goes his sorrow, for once he has found someone who he thought had understood the  **depths** where his heart resides; under the  **drifting current**  as it fuels his heartbeat. 

His pain is  _deep_ , and he still believes that they are  **so intertwined**  and despite her being gone, she was supposed to  **anchor** him, so that he does not drown beneath the stagnant crimson. 


	17. Chapter 17

It’s like **warm surge of wine** flooding through him;  _a sleepy, electric drowsiness_. The swimming pool of the ambiance ripples and sparkles as the gentle haze of his immovable gaze settles like waves in the twilight mist. How the  **intoxicating clutch**  of alcohol and drugs set his lungs aflame - with the kind that makes him see  _red_ and _sweat blood_. Eyelashes pulsing in time with his heartbeat and he sees them, because if he focused on something else, he’d completely lose himself in the  **churning eruption** of heat that forces his thoughts to revolt to white static. It’s exactly the kind that makes him want to vomit until his jaw is  _numb_ , because everything becomes  **unhinged** while he retches amidst trembling hands. 

He can still breathe everything in and everything out, but it’s not enough to stop his world from tilting. It’s the **aching loneliness**  that makes his vision blur and his ears ring - the kind that makes him drop black ink on clear water, watch it curl, watch it dance, watch it dissipate and do it all over again while he throws every ounce of his self-worth into the bottom of the whiskey tumbler. He wishes to whisk away all the fucking stagnancy of his universe and let himself rest for minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years. Numbers are just  _numbers_ and he’s exhausted, despite seeing gold in an already faded smile that’s too  **transient** and **ephemeral**. 

**He shakes** \- he cannot stop shaking, for his bones hurt; his nature too  _violent_ and  _indefinite_. Agony shudders and nestles itself deeper into the marrow of his bone - _digging, twisting_  - monopolizing the space between every visible space of his rib. His eyes are red and puffy and itchy from grieving in  **deathly, deafening silence**. It’s too much and it’s too soon for him to be disintegrated beneath the speckles of silver and jade. 

How his chest picks up its speed, as his throat closes around a sob, almost emitting an ugly, wet sound as he clamps a palm around the  _protrusion_ of his profile. Perhaps he’s stuck in a vicious cycle, an endless loop of  **heuristic descension**  as the world echoes through the croweded halls of the club. He finds himself stuck at an impasse as the precipitation looming below him bellows and belches for him to  _plummet_ and  **drown**. Yet, he still finds himself wading through the mud of his subconscious, that sticks to his calves like honey. Perhaps that  **brown bliss** was still capable to sculpt hope, a gesture out from the abyss that urges and presses him to be plucked out of the midnight hollow. 

Even when his home remains  **dark** and  **empty** , it’s not so hard to breathe inside it. It’s difficult and it hurts a bit - but he’d do it, as he stands amidst the hilltop in his mind, between the gaps behind his eyelids as the golden light penetrates and radiates. How his splayed fingertips splay, reaching towards the **absent sun** , as its beauty gives him the grace to float closer too hope. 


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-canon Nigel in comatose.

> _These violent delights have violent ends  
>  And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,  
> Which, as they kiss, consume._

Life has become a collection of  **documentation** ; from birth to death, Nigel’s existence would be all that makes up the archives as snapshots of moment recorded into photos or the wilted flowers on a grave. He wants to possess all the memories and people as though they were volumes in a collection. How  _fleeting_ everything becomes, as nothing is truly ever his own, not even his own life. All this effort he had gone througgh the  **preserve** and  **hold onto things** \- which he will have to let go of eventually. He’d rather not have a single thing, than to bear the pain of losing and letting go.

For he have mired so deeply inside the **immesurable expanse**  of his mind that he cannot relate to what’s solid. Configurations of epidermis or timber hold no meaning for him; for he’s always  **floating above** , peering down upon these mortal beings enacting the mundanities of their momentary life cycles, and he acts as though he is something  _omniscent_ and  _other_. He’s simply the  **narrator** in the story that unfolds around him; for he holds no sense of personhood in this particular story. A sliver of his earthly presence still pulsates through the glimpse of his faded being. His  **deadened subconscious**   _awestruck_ and  _dismayed_ , yet unnerved at a fact that such acceptance came so effortlessly.

He wishes that he could bypass the frosted glass walls that separate his poignant gaze, to descend and assume physical form once again. He wishes that he could be as concrete as everyone else, become familiar with the facts of his chiseled face and at home inside his ramshackled limbs. It’s so alienating to not able to feel this way; he wants nothing more than to  _touch_ and  _hold_ something meaningfully, against the backdrop architecture of his anatomy as he walks out into the streets and sky and attempt to  **acclimatize** , to try to connect with the indefinitive shapes around him. 

But something is always  **off-kilter** ,  _his equilibrium thrown askew_. Perhaps this is not what is meant for him anyway, for all he knows his world has always been different as his pain, cannot turn itself into something that resembles life. It cannot evaporate and frost windows of cars with lovers keeping warm inside nor become mellowed and washed away beneath the  **endless tides** of repetition as love, so _violently delightful_  and  _addictive_ , had become  **catastrophic**. 

Maybe his nerves become as electric with a  **scary vulnerability** that once shot his soul. His heart already wiped by ongoing apocalypses and he does not know if he will ever come out of the other side alive; whole; the same. He thinks love was never meant for the whole, for love is and has always been for his **ragdoll heart** already tired of beating at all. He’s one of those with scars so deep, no surgery can ever seal them closed again. For love is meant for the _broken_ , for the  _weak_ , for those who don’t seem to need it at all. He still collects remnants of  **sharp-toothed siren** _(in the form of broken strings of notes)_ and when she wraps him in her razerblade arms, she will sink her teeth where the wound hurts the most. 

It isn’t the protruding gash that hurts the most; it is his  **forehead** , as he lost wholeness of himself he never knew he had. And such  _detachment_ exacerbates his spinning head as his breathing quickens. And the world smokes up a  **hurricane** and he’s in the eye of it as eyes snap open. 


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-canon drabble inspired by Thirty Seconds to Mars song, Live Like a Dream.

 

> _All of a sudden, in the sky there was a bright light_  
>  Wild and haunting  
> And every moment is a lifetime  
> One life, whose time?  
> It’s the last night we’ll ever do this  
> Last night to say goodbye  
> You and me
> 
> _[Live like a dream](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DmS6fkzj09Bs&t=MWRlYjE5Y2QyNjM5MzVhNDlhNGE1MTNmM2QxMmMxMDZjZjg3YWZhOCxmbkZBUDNESg%3D%3D&b=t%3AQnJUZx9C89Ns4TbvuW38Yw&p=http%3A%2F%2Fnigellecter.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F174446482489%2Fall-of-a-sudden-in-the-sky-there-was-a-bright)  
>  Broken but free _

It’s funny, the kind of intense feeling he can cram into such an infinitestimal space. Within the span of countable, intense months, he’d fallen _deeply, madly, stupidly_ in love; he’d construct dreams, and demolished them. He’d build up hope, and lose faith. He’d had his heart  **broken, shattered, destroyed** , as  _magnificently_ as anyone who’s ever lived. He’d grieve over said heartbreak with  **bad, destructive decisions**  and even worse poetry. 

He grieved, because Gabi Ibanescu was  _‘the one,’_  because he’d been so sure of it and he would feel everything he needed to feel;  **the passion**. That was what made it love, right? With equal fucking dose of  **insanity** and **calamitive madness**  that would be a  _soul-scorching, life-altering,_   _torrential downpour_  kind of love.  **The fucking forever kind of love** \- or at least it was supposed to be. Passion has its place and he knew long ago that it would never be enough. All of that hands-y, talking all night as warm bedsheets tangle in a maze of their constasting bodies as the taste of the cigarettes linger on both of their lips,  _drunk_ on her kiss, **take-his-whole-fucking-self** ,  **love-infatuation** , but it will  _never_ make it on its own. Along with his corporeality, the palpability of his fucking love can burn long and hard, but never long enough. 

Even when he would trace his fingers oon the crevices of her body, as hers too, lingered at certain  **tattoos** and  **scars** that may have defined the history of him. Such welcoming dark night may have evoked enough curiosity for both, yet they sought to change each other, which would take the beauty of them away; like chipping off pieces of a glass window. _One never ruins art._

And now, his body is a mere residence of ghosts, as every chamber and vein lies the traces of a spirit, the  **remembrance** of what used to be. In his palms, his collarbone, the hollow of his defined shoulder, nape of his neck, sharp protrusion of cheeks, waist…. They are all empty spaces now, where  **hollow whispers**  echo in abandoned hallways as _phantom trace soft skin_ at night as he lays immovable, yet heart still constricts at the thoughts of her. 

Maybe he wants her out of his mind, out of his heart, and out of his life. By this time, he won’t remember her much; yet this hurts so bad as the kiss of pain, its gentle caress burns onto his still-beating heart. Its gentle  _attack_ and  _asphyxiation_ takes his breath and love and soul. 

All he wants is to long for a pleated dream where its gentle lull would steal his presence into the mythical mist. For he’d always fly too close to the sun towards its  **guiding light** , yet no moral words would scorch him further as he finds himself utterly lost in **reckless abandonment** , too close for comfort,  _to her_. 


	20. Chapter 20

> _ When it falls, it pours.   
> When it stops, it halts.   
> When it dies, it rises like a Phoenix. _

_Emotion is such a strange thing,_  as Nigel’s eyes swirl with that extra swig of whiskey he took before stumbling towards the bar counter. As he sinks further into the whispers of the dark night, he’s wallowing in his  **neon-dripped nightmare** ; tiny sparks popping and slightly burning his flesh, echoing vocal patterns from the  **distant vortex of time**  stemming from broken strands of his memory. 

His love won’t last forever, he already knows, as his  **sanity** would slowly and gradually be chipped away, leaving him further to be exposed, exposed to the  _dreams of corruption_  and _nonexistence_. Nothing gives him the will to stand and hold up his broken and battered body, but the world keeps turning, regardless of his failures. 

He wants to forget her, stop her memories from infesting his already  **poisoned brain**  as he wears an apparent lack of life in the space between the unpainted walls. He had pondered long and hard on how to improve on these set of  **circumstances** and it finally dawned on him. 

His rotting body would be uncovered, flies would eventually come buzzing and he wouldn’t be alone anymore. Yet, such  _fantasies_ like this are bruises on a weak mind of his and his eyes, painted red and blackened, shadows him inconsequentiality and worthlessness. 

He’d always known, she’d shatter his glass and scatter his wounds to sever the arteries she so hated to kiss. His own eyes would be plunged to the darkest seas to  _drown_ the memories once and for all… Even the  **discomfort** of hangovers wouldn’t entirely claim his heart, his bones, his veins and artery, his head and his soul. 

They miss her again; despite them  _never_ existing in the spaces between, as they become the **epitome of**   **almosts** ; that gray area of the subconscious where dreams argue with reality and the former always gets defeated by the latter. 


	21. Chapter 21

He always walked in the  **shadows** ; it wasn’t because he didn’t want the spotlight. Oh, no, he fucking  _craved_ it, but nobody seemed to notice the nature, its course how Nigel wanted it to happen. Perhaps, when he tried to smile, there was the  _vestiges_ of the light that used to shine through him before, but now, _he was nothing,_  but  **darkness**. A shadow, sucked into the darkness, yet so close and perpendicular to the light. While there are sparkles dusting the floor, glinting in the daylight languidly filtering through the spotless windows, his shadows are cast across grimed walls, without calming music, without any hurriedly thoughts about this place haunting him in his emotional torment. 

And his words are often the hard stones, _seemingly indestructible_ , yet capable of being shattered and crushed and sensations are ever so delicate; fleeting and extreme. He is a map of faint tracings; a book with tattered spine still stiff from disuse, yet holds its **intrinsic function** as it remains stitched with his own  _calamitous, visceral tendencies_  to unfurl, instead of remaining stitched in full of secrets. For he is the keeper of all the lost things, the holder of forgotten memories, with all tangible objects and thoughts sorted and housed even within the long-lost strands of floating recollections. 

As there remains so many unsaid words lying in the crevices of his mind, he wouldn't reveal so much so of his entirety, as he'd already revealed too much. Yet, he'd rather  **bleed** , go down this steep spiral staircase that leads to his most inner part of the  **cone vertex** than to remain disconnected to his residual wrath and agglomerating pain. 

As he equips  _faraway_ ,  _foggy_ grin on his face, he knows, just the thought of her sends his eyes to cloud further as already-healed wounds gape and his heart becomes more miserable. _He had ignored the death’s sweet greeting for what?_ Nothing changes and there’s no difference, except a hollow void in his gut. Every day, the same stupid bed becomes the place for his  **restless longing** , in tandem with the same  **restless pull of desire**  which had once given him a breath of life. 

He wonders when he wouldn’t be so  _ruptured_ and  _lost_ , trembling amid the gloominess with nobody to hold his hand and guide and accompany him back to where he belongs. He knows, straying strands of happiness still exists deep within him, like a small flame inside him continuously burning. Perhaps, his light will  **rise** in the midst of darkness and everything around him will once again  **illuminate** over all the heartbreak and struggles he’s been through. 


	22. Chapter 22

On some days, his eyes open to only  **shadows** , where the colors of the morning should be appearing, because sometimes the sun forgets to rise and the **embodied darkness**  lasts a little longer. He just has to keep in mind that even though there is sometimes darkness at dawn, there will soon be light at another dawn. 

It’s a **terrible sadness** to want  _a touch_ ; a look, a taste, of something other than this bitter loneliness as the in-between realm between the depth of onyx and the **blinding illumination** roams and escapes through the familiar horizon of bleak Bucharest cityscape. He cannot ever _forbid_ or let himself  _escape_ , as it continues to hang around the walls.

And his futile, yet fervently  **self-consuming love** , like  _meaning_ , remains out on the open road. Yet, despite knowing the severity of his emotional  _conflict_ and  _torment_ , it remains **difficult** ; for it requites talent and endurance and skillful formation. For oozing emotions glisten in tandem with spilling moonlight, as the sky turns dark, but no stars shine bright even when the **reverse-eclipse** should  _revert_ the destruction he could cause when spinning his real life stories, which are doomed to fail with its own inevitable consequences. 

He has to follow the path of its  **accordance** , not of his will, as his subconscious and fierce manifestation of his corporeality constantly tries to coommunicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something he only feels in his bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. 

For Gabi is the light of his life, the  **hearthfire** of this empty space he calls a body. He still recalls her harsh kiss igniting the resurgence of the flames in me; her tender goodbye reminiscent of  **intractable smoke**. The missing puzzle piece that is hidden in his veins as his heart runs wild and rampant again. It belongs to  _no one_ and every snippet of recollections and reminiscences threaten to break him. All of his imperfections carved into his skin and seen as scars as **razor blades** of severed memories come against his heart and knives within his back. 

The break of dawn is his hope; always showing up when he least expects and can be dashed, torn down liightning fast. Perhaps even struck by  **blinding illumination.**  It could be made of fragile glass as it  _filters_ through and  _diverges_ ,  _fragments_ as numerous strands penetrate through his own shadows. And some demons simply don’t hide in the dark; they live in fireworks unexploded by the distant radiance of  **vividity** and  **abundance**  as they weave colors in his soul when he thinks about them; trance-like in their last kiss, as he fixates himself in the budding ominousness of his choreographed death. 


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-canon sexual headcanon.

He has expressed his  **passion** to many, but  **explaination** never served its true and genuine purpose. But then, he wasn’t exactly going to share his  _unhinged_ ,  _raw passion_ with anyone. As his thoughts combining and directly uncoiling to bob and drift in separate directions as llimbs become mere lines of light intersecting, existing in a _single, cramped-up space,_  then unloosing in focused,  **endless entropy** as the ichor pressed beneath the tidal force ravaging through his insides. The air tugged along by the  **friction** as everything discharges, along with the stubborn strand of his voice, or any hint that may arise his vulnerability. 

He learned how passion slowly and injustly and quickly adjoined to become  **passionate** , without any  _emotional attachment._  He expressed in a way that drifted him into  _nothing_ and _everything_ , without ever losing invisible strands of his sanity. Being  _swallowed_ in the darkness is easy and layer after layer he may  **uncloth** to reveal the unshed tears and sewn-up cuts, yet  **no rollercoaster of emotions**  that embody him spills forth. 

All he hears are  **melodies** that he has never heard, and in that very moment, he understands  _fragility of a moment_. The **orchestra of passion** may resonate through his limbs and through his nerve endings, but no energy waves  _undulate, cross, become free-flowing movement_ outside of his corporeality. Through the seizing paralyzation of his form as disruptions continue to quiver his skin, his once-bright and shimmering bronze metal of his eyes become wild and unruly. Soft noises like the sounds of licking, spots of cold on his skin as once-robbed warmth returns. 

And he’s far away from the distance beyond the universe he exists in, as his mind takes off in a direction unknown. He wonders if he’d ever love  _unconditionally_ and be loved in return with  **inexonerable truth**  and  **sincerity** , as destiny as his fuel. A destiny that won’t rest before they find each other after years of ups and downs and **severe turbulence**. 

He’d continue to be  _crashed, shattered_ , then  _reassert_ all in one flawed universe as he’d show one every mystery inside of him. If one thinks he or she still could handle him, then by all means, he or she can stay and let him love her or him past the  **havoc** that Nigel Lecter embodies. 


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nigel's canonical psychotic tendency to get Gabi back no matter what the cost (META)

His  **heart** doesn’t speak the same language as his  **subconscious** does; for it demands different things. It desires different value. How he wishes he could somehow be blended colors instead of oil and water. Then he could somehow be gray, instead of repelling each other in  **conflagratory crashing** that becomes persistence of his treasured memories. 

It’s that night when he feels  _completely, utterly_   _lost_. Diverging, straying from the path as the  **mind’s perilous poison**  consumes through the most diabolic entity conjuring his  _menace_ and _wrath_ in  **jealousy**. 

How the Devil in his mind lures once  _gullible_ into  **deception** and  **treachery** , despite his love being the sea and Gabi Ibanescu being the shoreline; for the fate is the wind that made them meet and bring them together. Yet, it has never crossed Nigel Lecter’s mind that it will also be the one that will  **separate** them from each other. 

They’re perpetually stuck like this;  _meeting_ and  _separating_ and the painful revelation is that they can only just be like this -  _nothing more and nothing less_  - as time passes on. Because after all, they are just not meant to be; and even if he desperately wants to, seashore always bids  **goodbye** to the water when water meets seashore. 

This  _cascading revelation_  ruptures his soul and leaves him broken, and he refuses to collect further daydreams as the once-orderly labyrinth becomes **unbearably simple** , without his usual adroit bewilderment of being in the right place in the right time. His hands could almost touch it, his eyes see it, but so  _entangled_ were the turns of the events that he knows, he would die before he’d ever reach the  **summation**. 

And he futilely fights with all the chasms stretching across his  **unfinished timeline** ; and he’s always the one to  _build_ bridges to cross them, as Gabi  _destroys_ each and every one of them. She could never truly  _see_ and  _accept_ him; for he was merely a **growing extension** of her, instead of an individual that would leave a permanent imprint. Nigel does not believe that he will miraculously endure and survive of what it had been robbed away from him; he’s  **bleeding** from everywhere and there are  **scars** everywhere, but a part of him will still fight and so will he. 

_For this fight is from infinity to beyond; from him and from her._


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-canon headcanon inspired by Panic! At the Disco song "King of the Clouds"

> _Some days I lie wide awake ‘til the sun hits my face  
>  And I fade, elevate from the Earth  
> Far away to a place where I’m free from the weight  
> This whole world, this whole world _

He lies in this bed that’s not his own, living in this **broken heart** that couldn’t be called home. As a _trail of sorrow_ further darkens his path, as he becomes the demon in the shadow of God, where his **hollow mask** hides pure wrath as he futilely breaks down the walls of his heart. And this is a fight that will never reach an end, for this **little mass of anger**  growing inside of him will  _silently_ and  _painfully_ bruise and batter, until his chest feels  _heavy_ and  _crushed_. Perhaps then, he could let all the consuming thoughts of Gabi go as he refuses to plead for another azure morning.

And such thoughts, so  **melancholic** and  **boring** without the glimpse of exploding happiness as he becomes distraught in nights of constant mourning. How the form of his life ceases to be; once he had been before  _elegant_ ,  _novel_ form of her cello music flourished through the cracked open window like the arrival of spring. Once-timid heart of his begged for its fragile freedom, also pleading for  **an intimate journey** without ever  _relinquishing_ all that is, and was going to be. For future held no bounds and she’d become the sweetest thing he’ll ever touch. 

> _In the backbone of matter, I’m combustible  
>  Dust in the fire when I can’t sleep, awake, I’m too tired  
> This whole world, this whole world _

It will never again be as soft as this - silky bedsheets tangling in a maze between their bodies and air so tangibly  **sultry** and  **sweltering** , as if brimming with fire. As once his fingernails dug themselves deep into her heart, he had whispered her;  _“Stay and I will be your fucking dream and your fucking reality.”_

It’s exhausting riding in continuous circles around a train track of thoughts with no end, no stop so he can leave - because he’s going in circles. He thought everything was fucking done and over with. Yet, the weight of his thoughts’ cargo bears down on top of him. Circling thoughts are a train ride straight from the depths of a place no soul should ever travel, but unfortunately, they  _stay, linger, circle, repeat and repeat_ \- and distractions are close to being useless when he’s still in the train and he can still see the merging landscape pass around as he feels the  **rumble**  of the train, hear the  **clunk** of the train on tracks. And there’s no distraction that is loud enough to drown out the  **endless voices**  repeating the heavy burden that continues to push his heard  _down, down, down_. 

And  _exhaustion_ , for  **all-consuming cruelty of his love is toxic** , as he swallows it down like a fucking addict, as he relishes in the thick liquor sliding down his throat, a familiar pain shaking his frame with starvation as dreams of her abruptly wakes him in the dead of the night. It’s all too painful to remember all and everything, but he knows,  _by his heart_ , that  **the darkness is better than nothingness** , as he once teared out of the beautiful, seemingly irresistible light in the distant darkness. 


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Headcanon/Meta based on M83's Intro.

> _We didn’t need a story, we didn’t need a real world_  
>  We just had to keep walking  
> And we became the stories, we became the places  
> We were the lights, the deserts, the faraway worlds  
> We were you before you even existed 

**A bright beauty, a flash of elegance** ; the supernova of Nigel Lecter’s world constitutes as this. And it ends with the **gentle, spreading smile**  that would make the world around him _melt_. He never heeded to pay attention before, but now all the lights eminating from him becomes so  _potent_ and  _powerful_ that he becomes an  **embodiment of warmth** and  **light**. As the solar flare of his ever-still gaze becomes a bright beam he casts in the night, blurring into the background of the sky as a beautiful death concocted from what once used to be so effervescent and infinite. 

But the  **new brilliance**  seems to have swallowed him up, despite him not able to see the  **budding flame** and **spark of light** anywhere as all his cosmic display is diminishing to say at the least. And once warm shadowed alleyways he’d been left to becomes a place of uncertainty and unsteady; a deafening, quiet place that no longer seem familiar. 

> _We carry on, carry on_  
>  Follow us, we are one  
> The battle’s fought, the deed is done  
> Our silver hum runs deep and strong  
> Hand to the heart, lips to the horn  
> We can save, we can be reborn  
> Head on my breast, I’ll keep you warm 

It’s like as if he’s being bathed in the light from a **stained-glass window** , the scattered colors of his explosion seeping into his skin, permanently coloring and permeating every inch of his immovable vessel. The  _long silence_  becomes stagnant water as he spends all the passing, ticking minutes  **wading** and  **waiting**. 

As the night’s static sounds grow so loud, the rush of **suffocating emotions** crowd his throat further and fills his lungs (and they will never be spoken) as he lets himself  _disintegrate_ beneath the **gentle wakes of violent waves** approaching. And he will be forever washed away to the sea; beneath all the _intricate swirls_  of incomprehensible desiire as the  **deepening, impenetrable night’s onyx color**  becomes the epitome of  _silent wonder_ and _marvelous disguise_. 

His fight has been long lost beneath a temporarily grieving world, and even in death, it refuses to stay completely stiill, forcing Nigel to muster in the heat of immobility - or he will spin out of control as darkness consumes every morsel of his soul. And with a  **slickening silk of tear** glossing over his cool gaze (that once have sizzled), his sweat-sticky and crimson-coated skin wilt and retreats into the earth. 


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-canon.

This is where he bares all of his soul and how he buries all of his demons. He has tried fire and ice, but six feet under felt more his style. Besides, he’s  _limitless_ , yet bound to this **circle of eternal plight;**  as around it goes in his head, around his peripheral like a carousel. As if she had never left. He very much knew he’d come back to this; same as with all the things he had been occupied to simply  _forget_ her or better,  _push_ her beneath the immesurable stacks of layers preventing her from penetrating the **patchwork of veins** that still breathed her. 

He cannot ignore the pain that has rooted him into the same soil he’d grown from; for it’ll find him, it’ll make sure he  _never_ forgets as it sits in the back of his mind, toying with the  **scattering leaves**  of his **fragmented memory** ,  _itching_ at the  **branches** of his  **splayed limbs**. And all the hidden insecurity, the awkward silence, the lies he kept telling himself and the fighting as the frantic need for  **control** and  **possession** heightened cascades down to the depth of his hollow heart. What used to be the  _simplicity_ of her laying in his arms after she has fallen asleep with his lips on her forehead is the piece of heaven that he would like to rest on forever, but instead, there is a  **vacuous void** , as distance and separation pries them further and further as the premise of his suffering infects him like a fucking  **plague**. 

And he still breathes the same **tepid atmosphere** , the same noxious air flooding with acrid fumes. Even with the gracing rain saturating the pleasant scent of petrichor to thicken falling does not assuage the bustling labyrinth of Bucharest highways. All he inhales are scents of  **asphalt** and  **spilled petrol**  of his ruptured heart valves, as the fuel for his soul evaporates into the thin air. The whole endeavor lingers there like  _trauma_ , but he wouldn’t call his own a trauma.

It might have molded him as he still had been a  **malleable** and  **pliable** like a clump of recently peeled block of clay. Always looking for something to make their marks on, whether they be a city or a person. It could be the  **sickest** and  **rawest** as the twisted form takes a super-predator or a prey. Even when there would be no lies in his fiery emotions, it could be all lies when fictional. This was  _nothing_ from a fiction. one particularly bad day doesn’t negate all the good ones and  _exponentially_ make the bad down to worse, or the most barren days when one simply feels like **fading away** , instead of burning with impassioned drive. 

Despite all of these factors, all of this process does not feel like a  **burdensome duty** , or a **responsibility** , which had crossed his mind before, but now he sees a purpose, so he’s going to proceed to go through with his fucking instinct. It becomes solidified as the weight of those thoughts echo through his own slowed heartbeat, as his thoughts pulse through his brain. Simply he cannot connect with people or even be himself most of the time. For that to check true, he would have to  **wholly encompass**  in the act of killing, through the viewfinder as the world simply honed to a  _miniscule scope_  of his penetrative pupil.  

And he continues to  _perpetually_ LIVE, despite being  **painstakingly eroded**  all this time. 


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nigel in coma (post-canon)

He feels as though he’s been living awhile in a  **strange dimension**  and now,  **reality** is seeping into the surreal place he’d been. Or maybe he’s seeping into reality wherever that may be. He guesses whatever this is now feels better than how it had been all this while. Still _uncertain_ , still  _curious_. There’s an ease in his chest as if someone licked his fingers and pinched the fuse and put out the perpetual fire for a moment, so he can breathe, _unencumbered_ by  **smoke** and  **ash** and **remnants of his hurt**. It’s tough to find words for it all; for it’s like waking up inside a dream. **  
**

Still capable of getting dressed and moving through his day, yet it seems he’s looking from this strange dimension as if reality had been a mere illusion. Pain is an  **essential part** of Nigel Lecter’s being and he’s addicted to the chaos, because that’s how he’s been loved. Yet, he desires peace he doesn’t have to  _scream_ for; admiration he doesn’t have to bleed for. And Gabi still remains in his subconscious, lurking in the shadows of the back of his mind. And it terrifies him; that the rapidity of passionate  **fragility** of their short-lived fervency of love may drown beneath an ocean full of  **heartbreaks**.

That feeling  _persists_ ; the feeling in his chest when his thoughts are racing, yet he’s still going fucking nowhere, is a feeling that can eat him alive or give him the best freedom he’d ever tasted. It’s a  **double-edged sword** , one side being the weariness that could destroy it all and the other, the happiness that could make it all possible. But that has been the problem with their love; it’s always been  _impossible_ to tell if the feeling in his stomach is  **butterflies** ,

Or  **wasps**. For in this moment, to hear the earth breathe, to really listen to his heartbeat becomes difficult when he hears every  **conduit of electricity**   _surging_ through his cavernous lungs, as the swelling chest heaves the rush of his blood pounding around him. Despite feeling safer and sounder than ever before, he longs to hold onto his body and shut off his mind to close his eyes, sink beneath the lull of  **Hypnos’ grasp** ….

He should be used to the most heart-wrenching moment; when he thinks of her, but he’s in a position where he cannot do anything about it. All the missing pieces of their **unrealized dreams** remain incomplete beneath an open sky, as unspoken words collect softly in his hands. For  _she had broken her promise_  - him being her  **complete responsibility** as she had once promised him - and inexorably and evidently, she had broken him.

Yet, he supposes,  _nothing_ will extinguish him until he eventually drops by a force even greater than his stubborn will, until his still damning heart stops thumping and blood stops running through his veins. Not only once had he died, but he did  **twice**. How he had been carried to Norway beats his too **jumbled mind** , but the doctors had told him in passing; his unlikely, miraculous case will go down in the medical history as unprecedented.

_When will he finally find that profound reprieve of not having to worry if his cranium won’t detonate into million pieces?_   _Would there be anyone there to pick up all the fragments?_ A slow descent, as these snapshots of moments he had shared with Gabi will collide and rush past them, yet he manages to continually squander all of that precious time on such frivolous things, doing what he was known in his  **notoriety**. For he is  _nothing_ to eternity, his body would be literally deteriorating by the second in an **unavoidable truth**  of all. The sound of the gone, his descending death will haunt him endlessly. And he’d remain disconnected from the unaffected life of the others, with a  **devastated heart**  that barely flutters.

And he remains **ever-immovable**  and  **still** , beneath the madness which becomes a frozen pair of eyes for the blind; beneath the  **nihilistic superfluidity** of his intangible outer world, which attempts to breach his constantly restless mind. His whole attitude reflected in the  **massive chaos**  as the impossible world of fuzzy unclarity becomes crystal clear.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Gabi's POV. This is me saying 'fuck you.' to Gabi and Charlie. I don't think that relationship is going to last.

Women don’t leave all of a sudden; for they come from Venus,  _the planet of Love_. They have propensity to hold on with all they’ve got, for they  _fight_ for what means  **everything** to them. When they raise issues, it means they’re trying to improve a situation that’s worth investing in. Nigel should’ve paid attention to everything Gabi was saying, until she stops. That’s when he has to pay attention to her  **silence**. 

If she ever bothers, it means  _she cares_. And individual like her care like rivers until she runs dry; until she’s  **empty** and absolutely **fed up**. Through all these times of slow progress, her _descend_ towards the  **darkness** which Nigel embodied, but she does not hold him accountable and responsible for her own life, which she yearns to leave behind. 

Perhaps  **her father’s death**  had been the  _catalyst_ Gabi Ibanescu needed in order to fuel the growing extension of her own  **recklessness**. And she still finds Nigel’s conflagratory love a heavy weight; distracting her from the issues her own absence had created and weakening her virtues which offset Nigel’s shadowy darkness which both  _choked_ and  _liberated_ her. 

Nigel may have fed her all that she physically needed, but in the end, he  **starved** her soul. How he left  **chasms** stretching across her timeline and she’d always been the only one trying to build bridges to cross them. And as she once witnessed Nigel’s  **gruesome notoriety** presented with its animalistic savagery and remorseless antics, the  **summation** of their relationship brings chills to her spine and unnerving purses make quick jabs to her throat as if she’s being choked by some beast she never welcomed. 

Yet, she’d rather be choked than to live like a ghost; intangible, floating over seemingly distant oceans, away from her native country, as she continues to fight the tides of unsettlement with each breath drowning her, with no life support one more day. Nigel may come across as someone who stands  _tall_ and  _carefree_ and  _brutally unapologetic_ , his love  **beyond boundary** had pierced her brain. Bound her to  **grief** she could not remove herself from quite easily. 

_“ ****Fucking meaning I currently fucking am ‘til death do us fucking part,”_  Nigel said in his  **unsurprisingly candor**  and all the  **fervor** of all-consuming love. Perhaps the widening puddle of blood had become a perpetual motion as madness and insanity detonated to break their respective hearts. Nigel’s fucking love is a growing extension of Gabi’s own pained recollection, as it remains stuck and lodged between the past and the present, with such a bitter taste on her tongue.   


She finds drawn to the obliterated ashes of Nigel’s smoke, despite abhorring the **spewed hellfire** of violence that had  _anguished_ her heart. No fingerprints of their love will be ever washed away by the fire from the heart that cannot love, as she says, in her inevitable down fall, her vow of defeat. “I love you.” 


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Headcanon regarding Nigel's navy blue leather jacket.

It speaks of the old flames, as it offsets the  **ruddy complexion**  Nigel wears with such ease, along with the charcoal bricks of desolate Bucharest nightscape that contrasts along the edges of his silhouette. The radiant sunset color of his skin reveals against the dark-speckled sky, as the well-worn supple leather embraces him with a  **shadow’s embrace**. For the heat has become  _brazen_ , as it breaks into the exhausted sun as it sinks, and the comfort of the night settles deep into the smooth, polished fibers of the calfskin. 

The garment speaks his own **over-indulgence** ; the taste of his own power, which had been too sublime for a mere sip. So instead, after submerging the poor fucking sap into a complete _stupor_ , drowning him in his own fucking blood, his mind had rushed with a dazzling haze of **excessive gratification** , which caused him to seek out a flawlessly-tailored leather jacket, as his gaze glittered, soaked with satisfaction as adrenaline rustled his hardened skin. 

How it fits him like a glove; with approapriate folds and creases, the material thinned, yet not fraying nor breaking. And it permeates with his own cologne, hints of sandalwood, musk and leather that’s simply rich and vibrant, like a lilt of his own voice,  _exclusively_ intended for Gabi Ibanescu. How smile bleeds onto him, as he muses with the inebriation he feels with the immediate sensation of pleasure as his alluring, copper-stained hazel penetrates sharply into the discernible ambience. 

Such precious thing he wants to keep in his arms, as his lean, sinewy form serves as a protection against the  **gritty, engrossing resonance**  of his neighborhood; on the brink of demolition, yet its tenecious foundation refusing to become malleable underneath the whistle of  _reconstruction_ and  _renovation_. 

Darkness and brillance is what he tastes as he molds his lips upon hers into another heady kiss. How ichor draws from the wellspring of Gabi’s sweetness and eagerness, as a shiver down his spine sends him further and deeper into inebriation. How it pulls him under - as he allows himself the luxury of  **immersion** \- permitting himself to become less monolith and more _limber_ and  _flexible_. 

Only a hint of a suggestible smile is what breaks his lewd and wicked intentions, amidst the savagery and calamity he wrecks upon the swiftly descending midnight azure. As the stars watch as,  _tenderly_ , he caresses Gabi’s whispered name into his chest and becomes a  **wish-devouring beast** , as their coalescing forms melt below heavy clouds, amidst the white noise of smoke and laughter below them. 


	31. Chapter 31

As his body had immediately jolted and collapsed into the unforgiving ground. The world had toppled over, avalanched right in front him to suffocate as his hemorrhage had sent him on the swift journey of descent. Through the thinned and muddled reflection as his consciousness soon had severed, his  **adamant grasp** of himself, along with the strength born out of familiar etched darkness had him resurgent to see another day. How his soul treads on moonlight, how it  _bounces_ ,  _dances_ to the howling wind as the  **light** fades away and the  **darkness** spills over him as his own silence becomes  _deafening_.

**Life may be for the living. Death for the dead** ; but how  _difficult_ it is for Nigel to let life be, as natural as intrinsic as music, without death being numerous notes played in-between. Just as his concept of love, which had long dangled by a thread and remained hanging as a  **sore** , yet  **solemn reminder** , all the  _unwoven promises_  had bled trust, which became a fragile thread ready to be severed. He may be stubborn, yet somehow, such long arduous path of his life prevents him from the crushing blow of his stubbornness to be bent. And he cannot be as immovable and vehement before the  _stagnation_ of his strength. 

Such  **déjà vu** , between the bated breath held for an eternal moment causes its complete ceasefire of a memory never fully recalled, it is only remembered in the act of forgetting. As the light filtering in from the windows that once spotlighted those spaces, all the things waiting for touch; all things left  _uncovered_ and  _burdened_ in layers of dust. He simply becomes the  **figment** wandering through the cold-lit hallways while the house around him  **pauses** , waiting for its living ones. Even the familiar undulations from the hearth in his severed memory, of its gauzy yellow is like dreaming, remembering. Reminescing the desperate words his veins and nerves once sang as he fought against predestination. 

No matter which sides he ended up, as most people he knew of already would’ve had succumbed to the **threading torpor**  of such violence crumbling upon them, he well perceives that he had been the offsprings of  **undeserved violence**. He still don’t have the fullest idea of what he himself had been capable of doing prior to this, yet such tangible record had been enough for him to go on and solidify his wonderings. What used to be such a **kerosene-fueled heart** now severs through with a million knives, with stitched-up chambers that used to bleed barely beats beneath the brittled chaos. 

He cannot take the winds, for he’s at the summit of all things, gasping for air from the elevation. Through the  _disarray of confusion_ and _thick haze_ , he protests, yet no sound breaks through the confines of his shut throat. And he wonders how long he would remain beneath the perforated lines of the puppeteer, for no life ought to  **weigh** and **weave in and out** of him in seamless pattern. Despite it, he’ll continue to fight, even when he may suffocate to death beneath the potent wilting of a thousand flowers, as drops permeate through the fibers of his clothes and spill freely into the cobblestones. 


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Headcanon based on his canonical death at the end of the movie.

These pale hands are bound by **faded skin**  and  **prominent veins** ; the sign of life barely breathing and beating. He knows that if he were to touch her once again, his alabaster fingers would  _crack_ and  _shatter_ to the ground and he’d simply dissipate into soft powder of ash as exertion and defeated soul and broken heart give away. Because he was far too  **vulnerable** and refused to further  **desecrate** such perfection that is her in his hands.

_Shot poor bloke for love_ , he had said. With his own sweaty palms and shaking conscious.

He’d already been there, trying to understand why it’s so fucking hard to take that last leap towards the precipice of his unfurling and unmaking and to **let go** of remnant that she hasn’t even fathomed to breach and perceive. As he takes his life into his own hands, show the world that he can dance in the rain as the music plays on and on in his head, despite the silence he finds himself swimming in. 

The **radio static**  of his mind keeps changing the stations to play _the most nostalgic lyrics_ , and all the spoken words suddenly make sense. He turns the music off, but it doesn’t stop; as the memories don’t stop either as he finds his lungs sting and his heart rupture. As the spaces in between his heart beat, he wonders even if would be marginally possible to forget how to love.  _What are these moments caught between breaths signify as? Was it to signify the coming or the going?_   He wonders if fallling is the same as flying, as he feels  **weightless** swimming in ocean tides. The  **static heartbreak**  reverberates as blood pounds his ears, as halos of his hair reflects a once-divine light that he could not see. 

And he only bathes in  **half-forgotten memories,**   **dreams**  as he desperately tries to feel her vibrations in the air. Yet he stays alone in the radio silence of the absence of everything, as life has wrung itself through bones and marrow and skin. 

As the intensity of his gaze becomes thunderhead dark, he holds onto any form of representation he can get, because it’s always been repression. Watching the same snapshots over and over again, rewinding the parts when they finally manage to lean close. He’s not just in love anymore; he’s just a  **fiend** searching for the fury in his chest,  _that manifestation of a living thing_ that will serve as the galaxy of his bones. 

He’s terrified that one day, all that he is still will collapse and he will leave behind nothing, but a sour taste as he becomes a black hole; devastating and terrible. As furious red of his  **boiling blood** will melt with the  **onyx darkness** and will cause all of its wretching  _bloodstained glory_. Savage with  _sin_ and  _carnality_ as ash-silver hair of his head will grace his face, cut from features too fierce and soft. A harmony of cheekbones and sharp jawline, velvet lips and sensual roughness of speckled salt and pepper. 


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nigel x Gabi headcanon influenced by a Daughtry song, Break the Spell

> _ Like a moth into a flame  
> I’m hypnotized and like a stone  
> I’m paralyzed ‘cause I can’t look away  _

He must  _endure_ the experiences of a  **few heartaches**  if he wishes to become acquainted with what **real love** looks like. 

And he does slowly drown in his own bittersweet love affair, while the same empty hands yearn to be filled with amber illumination of  **whiskey** and effervescent  **sunset** , painting stories in colors; in rich red, blossoming pinks and royal blues. He knows pain; he knows it through **bloody fists**  and **broken bones** , through the taste of  **gunpowder** and  **metal** , getting high off of violence and snark. 

He doesn’t let it sit though, as he laughs it off, washing the blood off his face and smiling through crooked teeth. The burn of barely healing wounds on his side, the **familiar ache** of broken ribs persist, except his eyes don’t quite make it to the  _revealing view_ of the alleyway when he reminesces about the  **experience** \- when he  _indeed_ does, his smile immediately **wilts** at the edges. And it does not quite manage to mask his sadness, his fear, his unadmitted insecurity. 

> _You find your way under my skin_  
>  And I’m trying not to love you  
> But I hate the way I keep on giving  
> Into you like I always do, no matter how I try  
> Or maybe could it be that you’re the part of me  
> That’s keeping me alive!   
> 

He has a  **softness** about him; he does not want it nor does want it to define his wholesomeness. Despite the dread that comes with the unspoken words that weaken his knees, loosening his grip on reality and making his eyes water, he  _forces_ himself to fit into her world, despite the pieces that were never supposed to be put together. Because it makes sense.  **They make sense**. 

She knows pain, too - _in a different way than his own_ \- despite never waking up to raging words and a slap to the face, as the  **harshness** of the world graced her with something entirely dissimilar. No smell of alcohol and the sound of breaking glass, to wrecking noises and erupting shots in the dark. Nigel may be abandoned in and to violence, but it left Gabi alone - for he alone is brought up by her, as he clings to it furiously. For he knows pain in  **heartbreak** and  **disappointment** , _in absent physicality and broken promises._

And  _it’s too much_ ; and all  **desperation** comes back knocking from the base of his head, leasurely walking towards the top until all he could see are its feet dangling in front of his eyes, as it settles itself heavily aand deeply in his mind. 

> _How am I supposed to break this spell you got me under?  
>  I’m so addicted to the pain  
> Got your poison running through my veins_
> 
> _The way you pull me in_  
>  The way you chew me up  
> The way you spit me out  
> I keep coming back  
> I can’t get enough  
> I can’t go without you   
> 

He breathes  **violence** in his veins, and as if his destiny was written long before his birth in order to let his own universe collides onto her own, they were perhaps meant to become a mesh of  **shattered stardust**.  _Ruinous_ and  _unpredictable_ , a bullet fired from a gun too obscure for him to see its origins as the world renders sniper silent. 

And such  **sadness** collides right in his chest, like a  _xylophone of sorrow_ , played to the rhythm of his heartbeat. A soft sad, a harsh sad, but mostly a  **thousand fucking needles in his heart sad** renders him useless even as he blends himself into the obsidian shadows of the midnight blue. There may be menace and cruelty etched upon the hollows of his eyes, it’s the fucking sadness that sits in the back of his throat and in the place between sternum and ribcage. 

How it drips into the lining of his stomach, as the consequences become absolutely and unspeakably  **terrible**. Maybe it’s worth finding out what  _that_ may be. 


End file.
